BG Reads | News You Need to Know (September 29, 2020)
[BINGHAM GROUP]
*NEW* BG Podcast Episode 108: Industry Update with Skeeter Miller, President, Greater Austin Restaurant Association (SHOW LINK)
*NEW* Job Posting: Local Government Affairs Program Manager (Austin-Bergstrom International Airport)
[AUSTIN METRO]
Over half the city’s Covid-19 relief programs enter funding distribution stages (Austin Monitor)
By the end of September, nine of the 13 established economic relief programs for those impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic will have entered their funding distribution phase, providing money to Austinites in need.
In a Sept. 23 progress report, Chief Economic Recovery Officer Veronica Briseño said the city has distributed over $37.5 million in financial support to the different sectors impacted by the pandemic.
Four of the city’s programs have entered the final stage of the Economic Development Department’s Five-Phase Program Development Approach. These programs – the Childcare Provider Relief Grant, the Creative Worker Relief Grant, the Music Disaster Relief Fund and the Small Business Relief Grant – have already delivered money to awarded applicants… (LINK TO STORY)
Austin back to 80% of pre-pandemic traffic rush as more businesses, schools open (KXAN)
Austin traffic is back to 80% of what it was in mid-February before the pandemic, and city transportation officials said the latest uptick comes as more schools and businesses reopen.
“Things are changing day-to-day, week-to-week, so we keep an eye on corridors throughout the city to make sure that we’re keeping things nice and safe and efficient as possible,” said Jen Duthie, a managing engineer with Austin’s Transportation Department.
Traffic volume is down 20% overall, but rush hour is well below normal. The morning rush is still down 36%, and the evening commute is down 22%. With the traffic volume down, travel times as drivers would expect are faster, too — down 10-15% during rush hour… (LINK TO STORY)
PARD contends with homeless encampments during pandemic with limited resources (Austin Monitor)
With nearly 300 parks and 17,409 acres of property to oversee, Wes Bickham, an environmental coordinator with the Parks and Recreation Department, has a lot of ground to cover in his work finding alternative solutions for people experiencing homelessness who are camping on city park grounds.
Couple this vast expanse of city greenery with the CDC recommendation that cities should not evict or remove encampments during the pandemic, and the parks department finds itself doing a delicate balancing act, encouraging campsite hygiene management while removing those that violate city ordinances.
Although the city revised its camping ordinances last year, city code still prohibits people from violating park curfew hours. Code similarly prohibits disruptive behavior in a public recreation area. Both of these situations can lead to a criminal trespass violation for park campers, although PARD Director Kimberly McNeeley says several warnings are required before enforcement.
McNeeley told the Parks and Recreation Board on Sept. 23 that the parks department is working to abide by the Centers for Disease Control recommendations on not relocating campsites, but that “it’s a judgment call.” She said camps located in dangerous areas like flash flood zones or that pose a danger to the community become candidates for relocation. The remainder of the camps are left undisturbed since maintaining a database of their locations makes it easier to provide contact tracing and prevents the inadvertent spread of disease that can result from relocation.
For encampments that do get relocated, the process does not happen overnight. If 311 receives a complaint about an encampment on city property, the parks department will first issue a warning to the inhabitants before sending a service provider like the city’s Homeless Outreach Street Team to speak with the individuals. If the issue is not resolved, the department will issue a final warning before calling the Austin Police Department for enforcement.
“This is a huge issue, and we have very finite resources at PARD to deal with it,” Board Member Dawn Lewis said.
The parks department is only independently responsible for dealing with low-priority sites on parkland. Low-priority sites are those with no environmental or safety issues. McNeeley said that the department works to manage those on an ongoing basis, even engaging residents to lead cleanup efforts… (LINK TO STORY)
Austin Public Health official says he supports Austin ISD's reopening plan (KUT)
The top doctor at Austin Public Health, Dr. Mark Escott, supports the Austin Independent School District’s plan to bring students back to school buildings Oct. 5, he told the school board on Monday.
AISD’s plan is to allow school buildings to open at no more than 25% capacity at first. The district will start to bring more students back in the weeks that follow if there isn’t a spike in COVID-19 cases.
Escott said schools needed to be shut down in the spring because there was so much unknown about the virus, but it’s a different situation now.
“We didn’t have tests. We didn’t have [personal protective equipment]. We didn’t have a system to manage the data to make informed decisions,” he said. “We were flying blind. Now we’re not.”
Teachers have pushed back in the last week, saying they don’t want students to come back to campuses, especially in large numbers. Education Austin, the AISD teachers’ union, led a protest Saturday during which teachers expressed concerns about having students in the buildings.
But Escott assured the school board Monday that AISD is taking one of the more conservative approaches to reopening its schools.
“We don’t have a lot of data about spread within schools specifically because, for the most part, schools have been closed,” he said… (LINK TO STORY)
Austin ISD enrollment down by 5,000 students to start 2020-21 school year (Community Impact)
Following a year in which Austin ISD saw its student enrollment rise for the first time since 2012, the district is now estimating a decline of more than 5,000 students for the 2020-21 school year, which would bring enrollment down to about 75,000.
During a presentation to trustees Sept. 28, AISD Chief Business Officer Larry Throm said the enrollment decrease could result in $48 million in lost state revenue if numbers do not begin to trend upward as the school year continues.
“We don't want to alarm anybody,” he said. “These are facts, and we'll wait to see it in another two weeks where we are taking attendance daily to see if we can improve on these numbers.”
According to district data, AISD’s enrollment as of Sept. 25 has dropped to 75,001, compared to 80,261 in the 2019-20 school year.
While high schools have actually seen a 289-student increase in enrollment, there was a 4,836-student decline in elementary schools and a 298-student drop in middle schools. The district also reports a 274-student drop at its specialized facilities that are not based on grade levels… (LINK TO STORY)
Tesla’s timeline has factory opening next year (Austin Business Journal)
Tesla Inc. is moving at a rapid pace on its new gigafactory in far East Austin.
For weeks, construction crews have been moving dirt at the 2,100-acre site for the electric carmaker’s next manufacturing plant, which sources say Tesla expects to open next year. It’s a massive undertaking with up to 5 million square feet planned and many construction jobs still left to fill.
“They’re going very fast. They started this summer with mining and they already are building building pads in 60 days,” said Andy Linseisen, Austin's assistant director of development services. “This plant opens next year.”
City documents suggest the project could be completed as soon as May 1, 2021.
The project, which is located off the State Highway 130 toll road north of Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, is in the City of Austin’s extraterritorial jurisdiction and will rely on the city for water quality treatment and drainage, while the rest of the building project details will be handled with Travis County, Linseisen said. That means the direct economic impact of the project will mainly be felt in the county in terms of property taxes, he said… (LINK TO STORY)
[TEXAS]
Federal appeals court temporarily blocks ruling that reinstated straight-ticket voting in Texas (Texas Tribune)
A federal appeals court on Monday put a temporary hold on a lower court’s ruling last week that reinstated the practice of straight-ticket voting, again casting into uncertainty whether Texas voters will have the option in the Nov. 3 election to vote for every candidate of a political party with one punch. A final ruling is expected after the court weighs the arguments more thoroughly.
Straight-ticket voting was set to end this year in Texas, bringing the state in line with much of the rest of the country, under a law passed in 2017 by the Legislature. But on Friday, a federal judge ordered the state to reinstate the practice, writing that one-punch voting would speed up the voting process and decrease the time that in-person voters would be at risk of contracting the novel coronavirus.
Early voting is set to start Oct. 13, leaving election administrators little time to make major changes to voting procedures… (LINK TO STORY)
[NATION]
Democrats unveil scaled-down $2.2T coronavirus relief package (The Hill)
House Democrats on Monday unveiled a scaled-back $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief package, a last-ditch effort to pressure White House negotiators to come back to the table and strike a bipartisan deal before the election.
This pared-down HEROES Act — $1.2 trillion less than the original bill passed by the House last spring — includes $436 billion in emergency aid for state and local governments; $225 billion for schools and child care; an additional round of $1,200 stimulus checks for most Americans; money to restore $600 expanded unemployment payments through January; $75 billion for testing, contact tracing and other health care efforts; billions for housing assistance; and funding to shore up the census, U.S. Postal Service and elections.
HEROES Act 2.0 also includes a key provision backed by President Trump and his GOP allies: $25 billion to stave off thousands of layoffs at passenger airlines, as well as $3 billion for airline contractors. The beleaguered restaurant industry would receive $120 billion in aid under the Democratic plan… (LINK TO STORY)
A quarter of US adults now get news from YouTube, Pew Research study finds (Tech Crunch)
Around a quarter of U.S. adults, or roughly 26%, say they get news by watching YouTube videos, according to a new study from Pew Research Center, which examined the Google-owned video platform’s growing influence over news distribution in the U.S., as well as its consumption. The study, not surprisingly, found that established news organizations no longer have full control over the news Americans watch, as only one-in-five YouTube consumers (23%) said they “often” get their news from channels affiliated with established news organizations. The exact same percentage said they “often” get their news from independent channels instead.
Independent channels in this study were defined as those that do not have a clear external affiliation. A news organization channel, meanwhile, would be a channel associated with an external news organization — like CNN or Fox News, for instance.
These two different types of news channels are common, Pew found, as 49% of popular news channels are affiliated with a news organization, while 42% are not… (LINK TO STORY)